Technology is changing our lives. With the rise of the internet and mobile devices, so much is now available at our fingertips. This in turn has put pressure on the traditional way of running farming businesses. Many farmers now have smart phones and tablets that enable them to not only research the latest machinery, check the weather and carry out online banking; but also now for book keeping.

The Government has now jumped onto this bandwagon, with the vision to digitalise the UK tax system with Making Tax Digital. Their ambition is to become one of the most digitally advanced tax administrations in the world, making the tax system more effective, efficient and easier for compliance.

The election in June 2017, forced a change of pace from the Government. This led to a delay to the implementation of HMRC’S Making Tax Digital system for Business until April 2019. From this date it will only be VAT reporting that is affected. Then from April 2020 at the earliest they will mandate Making Tax Digital for other taxes.

A rapid period of change is not easy for any business and this is why the experts in the farming and rural business team at Howard Worth are helping businesses make the move to computerised bookkeeping systems as soon as possible irrespective of these dates.

Using the right bookkeeping system for your business, will not only save you time in data entry, but will enable your business to evolve and become more efficient. It also enables your accountant to provide a more accurate picture of your tax position and enables easier tax planning opportunities.

There can not be a generic approach to making this transition, with farms being various sizes, operating different systems and having their own objectives. Our specialist agricultural accountants can offer guidance towards the right package to suit the needs of the business. This could be a cloud based solution such as Xero, or a specific software based package such as Farmplan.

At Dairy Tech, our team will be giving demonstrations of how these systems work, how they can provide management reports and how they also help businesses remain compliant.

One of the ways to help make this step easier is to use technology such as a tablet device to assist with your business accounts. If you don’t have one already – you could win one by visiting our stand B14 and entering our free prize draw.